Oregon is prisoner to Measure 57

Motoya Nakamura/The OregonianUnit C at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville sits vacant, but the Department of Corrections expects to begin using it next year to handle an influx of new female inmates sentenced under Measure 57. Women make up 44 percent of convictions for identity theft.

In March, the Oregon Department of Corrections expects to welcome the first of what will become known as its "Measure57 inmates." The timing of their arrival could not be worse.

They will be expensive guests, and they will start showing up in the prison system just as state tax revenues are declining and agencies, including the Corrections Department, struggle to comply with an order to slash spending.

Measure 57 was referred to voters by lawmakers under pressure to head off a more costly initiative on the ballot. Overwhelmingly approved in November, the new law will go into effect Jan. 1 and will impose longer sentences for certain property and drug crimes. It also mandates drug and alcohol treatment for inmates with moderate to severe addiction problems who are considered at medium to high risk of committing another crime.

State officials estimate Measure 57 will bring an additional 1,600 nonviolent inmates into the prison system about 2012 and after and hold them for longer periods of time. The measure, with an estimated five-year cost of $411 million, included no funding mechanism, and the Legislature will have to find ways to pay for it.

That is a large claim on the state's dwindling general fund, projected to have a $142 million deficit for the two-year budget cycle that ends June 30. In response, Gov. Ted Kulongoski has ordered state agencies to cut spending by about 5 percent before June.

In retrospect, it is doubtful that Kulongoski and the state lawmakers who crafted Measure57 during a special session of the Legislature earlier this year would have chosen to spend more on prisons had they known a recession would hammer state budgets nationwide. At the time, they felt they had little choice but to authorize an expensive crackdown on property and drug crime.

Measure 57 is a classic example of how political activists can use Oregon's ballot initiative system to drive public policy in directions they favor, dragging officials along with them.

In this case, the man most responsible for Measure 57 is not even a public official. He is Salem attorney Kevin Mannix -- a former GOP lawmaker, former chairman of the Oregon Republican Party and frequent unsuccessful candidate for statewide office, including governor.

It was Mannix who sponsored Measure 61, which would have imposed mandatory minimum sentences for first-time property and drug crimes but did not mandate beefed up drug- and alcohol-treatment programs. The key difference was that Measure 61's mandatory sentences would apply to first-time offenders, whereas Measure 57's lengthened sentences would apply to certain drug crimes and repeat property offenses.

Narrowly rejected by the same voters who approved Measure 57, Measure 61 would have increased the state's prison population of 13,700 inmates by at least 30 percent and cost $522million to $797million in the first five years.

The Legislature enacted Measure 57 and referred it to voters as an explicit and less-expensive alternative to Measure 61, stipulating that if both measures were approved, only the one with the most votes would become law. A broad coalition of interest groups then launched a multimillion-dollar campaign to persuade voters to approve Measure 57 and reject Measure 61.

The irony of the campaign was that many of the groups in the coalition regularly lobby for increased spending for other state functions such as education, health care and social services, not state prisons.

"A majority of the money that went into this fight came from supporters who would normally oppose diversion of public funds into the prison system," said Kevin Looper, executive director of the Defend Oregon coalition.

Lisa Grove, a Portland pollster who designed the pro-57, anti-61 campaign, said it was clear from the outset that some kind of property crime measure would pass in November. Early polling showed Mannix had tapped into deep and growing public anger over property and drug crimes.

Grove said she searched for messages that would defeat Measure 61 without offering an alternative proposal but couldn't find one that would work.

"There is absolutely no question in my mind that we would not have been able to defeat 61 without 57," she said.

Rep. Chip Shields, D-Portland, a key player in the crafting of Measure 57, said lawmakers "were pinned into a corner. Voters needed a choice between something that wouldn't work and something that would work and would cost less. We felt we had a responsibility to provide a choice to voters."

In the end, Mannix did not get what he wanted most -- mandatory minimum sentences for first-time property and drug crimes. But in a larger sense, the man who also sponsored 1994's Measure 11, which imposed mandatory minimum sentences for certain violent crimes, advanced his anti-crime agenda and forced his usual enemies to help him.

"We've got progress on public safety. That's a good thing," he said after the votes were counted.

But that progress will come at a cost. Department of Corrections officials estimate Measure 57 will cost an extra $9 million before June 30 and $153 million in the 2009-11 biennium, including about $40 million Kulongoski has pledged for the treatment programs and as grants for treatment to the counties.

And there will be other costs beyond increased operating expenses. Because of Measure 57, corrections officials say, the state must borrow $314 million between 2010 and 2017 to finance prison expansion and pay back that money plus $203 million in interest during the next 25 years.

Corrections officials have planned for passage of a property and drug crimes ballot measure for months. Their preliminary plans call for the use of open beds at the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras and the opening of a vacant unit at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, a women's prison. If necessary, they will begin to convert dormitory beds into bunk beds.

Kulongoski will announce his 2009-11 budget plan today, then the 2009 session of the Legislature will have to grapple with implementing Measure 57. Shields said he will urge eliminating "corporate tax breaks" and raising the corporate minimum tax as possible funding sources, adding that "all criminal justice costs should be on the table" during the next session.

Kulongoski said he hopes to find ways to hold the costs below the $153 million estimate for the next biennium.

"I wish I didn't have to fund it, but I have to," the governor said. "Now it's a choice between building prisons, and health care and schools. It's a tough issue, but the public has spoken."